Today made an impact on me.
This past week my team and I have been making hospital visits. They separate the men, women, and children into different wards. Each ward has thirty-plus beds lined up side by side with no curtains and no privacy. The warm, stale air is hardly sterile, but nothing about those wards display cleanliness anyway.
It’s intimidating to walk in at first, looking at an entire room full of broken people, but as soon as I walk up to that first bed the Holy Spirit completely takes over.
A majority of the patients believe in Jesus, some of them don’t, but they all gratefully accept any prayers we have for them, although sometimes wary of us.
Today I met Rashid. There was something different about him. He was probably in his fifties, strands of gray woven through his curly hair. Despite his sickness, he was surprisingly so ready to talk to me and Shae. We told him our names and explained that we wanted to pray for healing over him. Right up front he told us that he was Muslim. My guard immediately shot up. If he was Muslim would he be okay with us praying to our God, to Jesus? We took a different approach and started up a conversation with him. He had some intestinal issues and he showed us two long scars on his stomach. He had been in that hospital for a month because of it. He said that family used to visit him in the hospital, but as for today he seemed very lonely.
At the end of our short conversation, I asked again if we could pray for him. He agreed without hesitation. After praying for him, he thanked us and asked us to keep praying for him. But then when I was least expecting it, he told Shae and I that if our God healed him that he would go to our church and that he would believe in our God. Because, he said so matter-of-factly, if his body healed then it’s obvious that it was our God that healed him.
I stared at him, in shock. Did this Muslim man seriously just say that if my God healed him, he would believe in Him? I thought back on my prayer. Did I pray the right things? Did I intercede enough for this man? All of a sudden his healing became even that much more important.
I had to ask myself, could my faith possibly help make this man whole, not only physically but also spiritually?
My God is a God of miracles. I can’t wait to see Rashid in church one day, telling me of how OUR God healed him.
Please pray for Rashid. He needs all the prayer he can get.
